Capture-replay

Overview

A capture-relay protocol flaw exists when it is possible for a malicious user to sniff network traffic and replay it to the server in question to the same effect as the original message (or with minor changes).

Consequences

Authorization: Messages sent with a capture-relay attack allow access to resources which are not otherwise accessible without proper authentication.

Exposure period

Design: Prevention of capture-relay attacks must be performed at the time of protocol design.

Platform

Languages: All

Operating platforms: All

Required resources

Network proximity: Some ability to sniff from, and inject messages into, a stream would be required to capitalize on this flaw.

Severity

Medium to High

Likelihood of exploit

High

Avoidance and mitigation

Design: Utilize some sequence or time stamping functionality along with a checksum which takes this into account in order to ensure that messages can be parsed only once.

Discussion

Capture-relay attacks are common and can be difficult to defeat without cryptography. They are a subset of network injection attacks that rely listening in on previously sent valid commands, then changing them slightly if necessary and resending the same commands to the server.

Since any attacker who can listen to traffic can see sequence numbers, it is necessary to sign messages with some kind of cryptography to ensure that sequence numbers are not simply doctored along with content.